


A Mountain's Heart

by Elenothar



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Durin Family, Erebor, Fluff, M/M, Thorin is the soul of Erebor, somewhat non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/pseuds/Elenothar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Arkenstone is found the same day that Thorin is born, and while Thror once again takes this as a sign of the righteousness of his rule, it is not a coincidence. </p><p>Or the one in which Thorin isn't quite as normal (even for a king) as he wants everyone to believe and carrying the soul of a mountain is really much more of a burden than a joy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mountain's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/3651.html?thread=7639875#t7639875) prompt on the hobbit kinkmeme:
> 
>  
> 
> _The Arkenstone is found the same day that Thorin is born, and while Thror once again takes this as a sign of the righteousness of his rule, it is not a coincidence._
> 
>  
> 
> _This could go several ways, including parallel to canon as an explanation for why Thorin acts the way he does, why he continues to yearn so strongly for Erebor long after others have given up, why he comes apart after they retake the Lonely Mountain, so close yet still separated from his other half. Or it could change things as they progress, subtly altering Thorin's personality and actions during the story, or perhaps even starting from his exile, and have far reaching consequences on the quest. Gen or pairing is fine, and I confess to a weakness for Thorin/Bilbo._
> 
>  
> 
> _tl;dr - Thorin is the soul of Erebor, and once he returns it never falls again._

***

_Thorin’s first memory is of a light blazing in front of his eyes, casting facets of multi-coloured light over his face and into his heart._

_(Only later he will realize that it had_ always _been in his heart.)_

_He remembers stretching out his arms, reaching for the beauty in front of him, and a deep chuckle before the brightness receded._

_He doesn’t find out for a long time that his eyes had first opened the exact minute that a miner burying deep into the mountain had laid free the arkenstone. He also doesn’t know of his mother’s wonderment when the new born babe’s eyes blazed in all the many colours imaginable for a short moment before settling into a dark, clear blue._

_Growing up, he sometimes hears whispers naming him Child of the Mountain, but he doesn’t think much of it. All the dwarves of Erebor are the mountain’s children and all dwarves come from stone. Why should he be any different? And if there are other whispers too, whispers of the line of Durin’s right to rule with such an heir, his mother is always there, gentle and real and reminding him of the dwarf he is beneath the label of royalty and stone-blessed._

_The first time he touches a rock while playing under his mother’s careful watch and the rock_ changes _, starts to glitter and glow, he is too young to understand the impossibility of what he has wrought with only a touch, is simply enamoured with the brightly sparkling stone that had been so dull only a moment before. He doesn’t notice his mother’s shocked expression, nor does he think much of her pleading with him to keep silent about his gift._

_(He has no way of knowing then, that his beloved grandfather is not always the kind old dwarf he knows him as, and that his mother only seeks to shield him from greed’s darker sides by refusing to tell anyone  what her son’s hands had created.)_

_This is how Thorin spends most of his childhood and youth; a normal dwarf if of royal blood. He doesn’t consider himself as different really, just a little strange perhaps, by dwarven standards – even if, deep down, he sometimes feels something old and powerful stir that should have no place in the body and mind of a dwarf barely past his thirtieth birthday – until the day that he touches the arkenstone for the first time._

*

Bilbo Baggins had barely resigned himself to housing twelve rowdy dwarves in his hobbit hole, when the thirteenth barged in. Having truly expected his capacity for wonderment this evening to have been exhausted already, Thorin Oakenshield completely blindsided him.

Despite the dwarf king’s physical presence and rumbling deep voice, it was his eyes that immediately caught Bilbo’s attention. A deep clear blue when Bilbo first met Thorin’s powerful gaze – and only barely remembered to be indignant at the other’s rudeness – they seemed to sparkle in different colours whenever Bilbo looked throughout the evening.

(And he looked often, his gaze drawn back time and time again, like one magnet to another.)

He would’ve written it off as a trick of the light, if there hadn’t been a moment, just after Thorin’s last passionate words about reclaiming Erebor had died away, during which their gazes had met and there was no mistaking the green and gold fire residing in those eyes.

It would be silly to say that Bilbo threw all common sense out of the window and embraced his Tookish side because of one mysterious dwarf’s eyes. It would be equally silly to say that it was because of a song, resonating through Bag End deep in the night. And yet, both of those statements were true.

Bilbo supposed that, in the end, there could be worse reasons.

It took a few days of travel for Bilbo to become familiar and comfortable enough with the group to approach someone with his questions. Someone, in this case, meaning Balin, as he seemed both one of the more easy-going and approachable dwarves and also the most knowledgeable.

Once he’d managed – with some difficulty – to bring Myrtle alongside Balin’s pony and they’d exchanged the usual pleasantries, Bilbo couldn’t help feeling as if the old dwarf had been waiting for the hobbit to approach him.

“You have questions, Master Hobbit,” he stated, a barely suppressed twinkle in his eyes. Apparently he approved of Bilbo’s desire to learn more about the people he was travelling with.

“Please, call me Bilbo,” Bilbo returned, then hesitated for a moment. There was really only one thing he was dying to find out, even if he was also quite curious about other matters. “I hope this wouldn’t be considered a rude question, but I’m afraid my curiosity has got the better of me. Why are Thorin’s eyes so changeable? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Balin sighed, quite clearly unsurprised. “He has never spoken of it so we do not ask.”

Bilbo stared at him for a moment, unwilling to believe that one of Thorin’s closest friends wouldn’t know. He couldn’t imagine anyone following their leader that blindly, but then again, from what he’d seen all of these dwarves were unfailingly loyal. And Balin especially didn’t seem the type to foolishly follow just anyone.

“Fair enough,” he finally said, nodding. If Thorin didn’t talk to his friends and family about it, he would certainly not answer any of Bilbo’s questions, if he even managed to scrape enough bravery together to approach the other. It seemed he would have to let the matter rest, no matter his continued curiosity.

His resolution wouldn’t stop him from wondering, but for now there were enough other questions he could ply Balin with, should he prove willing to answer.

*

_The halls of Erebor are dark around him when Thorin sneaks toward the throne room. He knows he shouldn’t be doing this, his movements guiltily furtive, but the call of the arkenstone had been growing in his mind of late, a strengthening longing to at least once hold the remarkable jewel._

_As he’d hoped, the throne room is deserted at this late hour as he approaches the dais and the stone set above it. It seems to glimmer even brighter than usual in the half-light pervading the great cavern._

_For a long while Thorin simply stands in front of the throne, staring at the object that had called to him in dreams for years now and wonders what’s supposed to be so special about a stone. Oh, he’s heard all the tales of the arkenstone proving Thrór’s right to rule with its clearly divine origin, but still, it is just a stone. Should be just a stone._

_Slowly, almost without his conscious consent, his right hand inches forward until his fingers hover just above the arkenstone’s smooth surface. His fingers twitch at the slight warmth that emanates from it and move forwards until they finally touch the unblemished planes of hard stone._

_For a blinding, all-consuming moment Thorin forgets who he is. He is the stone beneath his feet, the jewel his fingers still touch, the veins of gold and precious metals running deep below him. He is the mountain all around him, and with this state of being comes the ancient power of stone crashing into his mind, as if a floodgate has opened to something buried deep within him._

_And then he is Thorin again, one dwarf, small and weak in comparison, blue eyes fixed on the stone he’d stumbled away from in shock as if burned. He looks down at his hand, but finds no mark, no remnant of the strength that had flown through him, both fiery in its fierceness and like stone in its solid age._

_He is still shaking when he reaches his quarters again, and sleep eludes him for the rest of the night._

_Thorin doesn’t tell anyone of his experience – his mother is already worried enough about him, his father usually busy, and his grandfather, even Thorin has to painfully admit, isn’t who he once was, a shadow growing in his heart and mind. For a while he thinks about confiding to Frerin and Dís, but even if he were fully convinced, what would he say to them? ‘Oh hello sister, brother, apparently when I touch the arkenstone I’m a mountain. I think I’m not quite right in the head’. No, silence is deemed the best course of action, and so his silence he keeps._

_Then the dragon descends upon Erebor and everything changes._

*

Thorin had, of course, noticed the halfling’s curious looks and his interest in Thorin and his strange eyes, despite the dwarf king’s best attempts to divert his attention or scare him off by being his usual rude and cantankerous self (Dís’ words, but it wasn’t as if he could deny it).

As a prince of Erebor he’d been used to being stared at, to living most of his life under the public eye, so the glances themselves didn’t make him uncomfortable. No, what he despised so much was the reason for Bilbo’s scrutiny. Having long ago decided that whatever it was he was wasn’t much of a blessing, it had become a burden instead, one more thing that set him apart from the people around him when there were so shamefully many moments in which he wished he could simply be someone like Bofur – mostly unburdened, easy-going, and _normal_. Obviously he never acted on those wishes, didn’t even let on that he might be thinking such things when most were of the opinion that as royalty his life should somehow be _better_ than everyone else’s. He was of the line of Durin and he would stand strong and endure.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t sometimes wish for things he could never have, though.

And Bilbo… Bilbo was part of that. There’d never been any lovers or suitors in Thorin’s life, partly out of necessity born from unpleasant circumstances, partly because he’d always held that he couldn’t ask it of anyone to share their place in his heart with a mountain. And yet, if Thorin was rock and stone, unbending and unchanging, then Bilbo was everything green and alive, growing and supple. A balance.

Sometimes he dreamed of a world in which Erebor was retaken and there was a hobbit by his side.

He thought of it a lot less while being captured by goblins and running from certain death, admittedly, but it was never far from his mind.

And then he raised his head to see Azog the Defiler grinning at him, a helpless dwarf stuck in a tree like a gift on a silver platter, and his world was upended again, his only victory undone in front of his eyes.

All sense of time disappeared and it seemed to him as if it was only the blink of an eye later that Azog’s mace struck his chest and the white warg’s teeth closed around him. It was a different kind of desperation now, with his death so imminent while there were still people relying on him, people he needed to protect, that made him throw out his hand and pour all of his fear and rage into the beast.  

He didn’t expect it to actually _work_. Yet the unmistakeable sound of new-born stone crackled through the air and the teeth slackened for a moment, dropping Thorin to the ground as the warg yelped once in shock before going silent forever as its head, too, turned to crystal.

His consciousness fled before he even hit the ground.

*

At least, Bilbo thought with the sort of grim satisfaction that had been entirely alien to him before coming on this quest, he wasn’t the only one shocked by this turn of events, judging by everyone else’s reactions. If he weren’t sitting on the back of an eagle, clinging on for dear life, Bilbo would be rubbing his eyes in a vain attempt to determine whether he’d really just seen Thorin _crystalize_ a giant wolf or whether he had been hallucinating the last day or so.

(Which really, that would be totally fine by him, he already knew he was going to have nightmares not only about throwing himself at orcs without a second thought – or any kind of training – but also about Thorin being thrown around like a rag doll).

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked breathlessly concerned, his heart still pounding , as soon as his feet touched blessed ground again.

Gandalf looked up from where he was kneeling over Thorin’s far too still form.

“He gave too much of himself,” the wizard murmured quietly, his brow creased with worry.

Bilbo could only stand and watch helplessly as the other laid a hand on the dwarf’s brow and began chanting something under his breath, too quiet to be heard by any of the worried company hovering all around him and their fallen king.

A collective sigh of relief went through their ranks when, after an agonizing minute, Thorin gasped and opened his eyes.

“What happened?” Thorin rasped, attempting to sit up only to sag back to the ground with a barely concealed groan.

Gandalf fixed him with that severe stare of his, but even Bilbo could see the wizard’s own relief, which negated most of its intimidation value. “You pulled quite the stunt there, Thorin Oakenshield. And without Bilbo here you would now be dead.”

“The Halfling?” Thorin asked, a surprising _lack_ of surprise in his voice. “What did he do?”

“He jumped between you and Azog and distracted him long enough for the rest of us to intervene.” Gandalf replied, and if there was a certain amount of ‘I told you so’ in his voice, no one was about to call him out on it.

Thorin turned his head a little to meet Bilbo’s gaze. “It seems apologies are in order, Mister Baggins.” Even lying on the ground he somehow manages to incline his head in a regal way, a sign of deference that Bilbo certainly hadn’t expected to ever receive from him. “I am in your debt. And I am sorry for doubting you.”

If Bilbo had thought he had known what relief felt like before, it truly didn’t compare to the almost exhilarating rush of emotions that spread through him now. For a slightly terrifying second he felt like all of his life had been building up to this point, to finally being accepted by Thorin Oakenshield and earning his place in the company.

“No, no, it’s all right. I would have doubted me too,” he finally said and his heart soared even more when Thorin returned the smile that was undoubtedly splitting his face in half with a slightly more sedate one.

Thorin then turned his roaming gaze back to his company, no doubt checking for injuries. Without having to be asked, Fíli and Kíli stepped forward to help their uncle up, taking most of his weight as he staggered upright.

Bilbo’s heart sank a little again at seeing how _weak_ Thorin looked, leaning heavily on his nephews to even stay vertical – it was not a look that anyone was accustomed to seeing on their leader and it wasn’t one that anyone had _wanted_ to see on him, not when it seemed so fundamentally wrong.

Gandalf’s thoughts had apparently been running along the same lines, for he said, “We should find shelter. You have to rest before we can resume our journey.”

It turned out that Thorin wasn’t battered enough not to be able to muster up an impressive glare. “It will take days until my strength has fully returned,” he growled. “We do not have that kind of time.”

“But we still need to find shelter for tonight at least,” Gandalf returned sharply, though he didn’t argue the point. Not that it would’ve helped much anyway, as Thorin had already displayed an astounding talent for bull-headedness, _especially_ when arguing with the wizard.

At Thorin’s nod, the whole company started to move, though Bilbo could’ve sworn he heard Bofur mutter, “So we’re just going to ignore the way he can suddenly turn wargs into sparkly statues?”

Two harrowing hours later, as they’d finally found a place to rest for the night, it turned out that, no, they weren’t going to ignore the issue, even if Thorin looked as if he’d like to do nothing more than exactly that.

They’d scrounged together what they could to eat and settled down around a fire when Balin finally asked the question that everybody else had been chewing on as well.

“What in Mahal’s name happened back there, Thorin? I’ve known you all your life and I’ve never seen you do...” Even the usually so articulate Balin seemed to be at a loss for words as he gestured helplessly. “…that.”

For a second Thorin looked very much like a cornered animal, but the expression was wiped from his face so quickly that Bilbo couldn’t be sure anyone else had noticed.

“That would be because no soul alive knows but me,” Thorin replied after a few moments. His lips twitched in what might’ve been amusement in another time. “I think Gandalf would be able to verify that.”

Gandalf sent him a mild glare for the indirect dig, but conceded, “Tis true, I knew nothing of your powers, save that you, my dear Thorin, were _not_ an ordinary dwarf.”

Something almost dark flitted across Thorin’s face at that, but it was gone before Bilbo could take a good look at it. Besides Thorin was addressing everyone again, redirecting his attention quite thoroughly.

“I assume most of you have heard about me being born on the same day as the arkenstone was found?”

And assenting murmur rippled through the assorted dwarves, which meant that Thorin had really only said it for Bilbo’s benefit, leaving him oddly touched by the small gesture.

“Well, I do not know whether that is the reason or a symptom, but it corresponds with my changing eye colour, which I know for a fact _all_ of you have remarked upon at some point. And my ability to turn mere rocks into precious stones.” Thorin’s gaze was curiously empty, fixed on something far away only he could see. “It was my mother who first witnessed me doing so and she implored me to keep it secret. I was too young then to understand that she only sought to keep me safe, but I saw no particular reason to disobey her.” His lips twisted into something faintly self-recriminating. “As you know, it didn’t really seem to matter in the end anyway, and the farther away from Erebor I travelled, the more effort it took for what I could easily accomplish in the mountain.”

The dwarf king fell silent once more, story concluded, and for a long while no one uttered a word. Bilbo didn’t think anyone _knew_ what to say, really, and that was definitely a club he could join in wholeheartedly.

Unsurprisingly it was Gandalf who broke the silence, his piercing gaze never wavering from Thorin’s set face. “I do not believe that to be all. If what you’re holding back has any bearing on this quest, I urge you not to keep your silence, Thorin. You will need every advantage possible once you near the end.”

It looked to be with extreme reluctance that Thorin answered the wizard’s query, his voice almost inaudibly quiet, yet impossible not to hear. “There is one more thing which I have never told a living being.” He looked into every single dwarf’s and finally Bilbo eyes before continuing, “And I would ask you to never reveal this to anyone.” He waited until everyone had nodded, faces serious. “When I touch the arkenstone it acts as a conduit between me and the mountain. I have only done so _once_ and I would only do so again if the need is dire indeed.”

After everyone had wrapped their heads around what they thought that even meant – Bilbo still wasn’t sure, but guessed that it was something dwarvish again – it was Balin again, who voiced the obvious question, his voice especially careful. “Why not?”

“Because I wasn’t myself!” Thorin shouted, an eruption of emotion seldom seen, his eyes suddenly blazing wildly in green and red. “To have a whole mountain flowing through you, all that power, there was no room left for a simple dwarf. _I wasn’t just Thorin anymore._ ”

No one knew what to say to that either.

A few hours later all of Bilbo’s attempts to go to sleep had failed, his mind proving too restless to relax into sleep, so when he heard Balin and Thorin whispering to his right, he couldn’t help but give in to his curiosity and listen.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Or even Dwalin? We would’ve born this burden with you, bâhâl,” Balin asked, his tone subdued.

Thorin sounded both angry and very tired when he quietly replied, “It would’ve been another thing to judge me by, another label to set me apart. Don’t you think I already had enough of that? Don’t you think the rumours were enough? And after… it didn’t matter anymore. It still doesn’t matter, until we reach Erebor.”

“It didn’t seem unimportant a few hours ago, Thorin,” Balin returned, but any anger or hurt that had infused his voice before had disappeared, leaving only tired sympathy and a hint of pity in its wake that Bilbo just _knew_ had to rankle Thorin worse than the anger had.

Thorin hesitated a long while before answering. “I did not know I would be able to do what I did,” he finally said, “and I’ve long grown accustomed to keeping it a secret.”

There was a faint rustle, as someone moved and Bilbo opened one furtive eye to see Thorin leaning into Balin, foreheads pressed together. “I’m sorry, old friend. I had not wished to burden you, but I never meant to hurt you or squander our friendship.”

“Our friendship remains, akhûnith, as always.”

Bilbo had to swallow at the gentle determination in Balin’s voice – such loyalty Thorin inspired, deservedly Bilbo had come to think.

Some more rustling followed and Bilbo saw Thorin rise slowly, his body still weak, and move towards the closely intertwined bundles of his nephews. No words were exchanged between the last of the line of Durin, but the way their bodies curled around each other in comfort spoke deeper than any words could’ve and Bilbo was glad to see it. With that image in his mind, he finally drifted off to sleep, even if it was disturbed by dreams of orcs and dwarves and pretty stones.

*

_With every step he takes away from Erebor, away from the mountain that is his home, emptiness unfurls and grows somewhere deep inside his chest. He had never noticed the warm weight of the mountain resting there, but now that its presence is gone he feels its loss keenly._

_He tries and fails not to replay the moment that the arkenstone had slipped from his grandfather’s fingers over and over in his head. He isn’t unhappy that he will now only be Thorin, but as much as he fears the power the stone had unleashed within him, the feeling of loss is hardly diminished._

_Lying wide awake at night as winds howl all around the camp he wonders what the use of him is, now that the mountain lies far behind them. He wonders what the use of him ever being different is supposed to be, now that he’s seen the ease with which Erebor had fallen, and has been faced with his own powerlessness to stop the dragon._

_When his people are starving and his siblings’ cheeks hollow with hunger, he steals away from the camp and takes a simple stone in his hand. But however hard he concentrates, it remains dark and dull, until he all but roars at the sky in despair._

_(He has never felt any failing so keenly as uselessness.)_

_When he looks down at the stone again, all his emotion spent, his astonished eyes see it glittering dimly in the night. It seems his gifts haven’t fully deserted him, even if he is terribly weak for two days after. Once the act had been all but thoughtless, now it takes everything he has. Much like this new life he leads._

_Thorin takes care never to reveal his doings to anyone, and when he comes back to camp with a few coins more than expected, he puts it off as having found more work than anticipated. They’re all desperate enough for every bit of money to believe him without question._

_Only his mother knows, as she had known then too, and he aims to keep it that way. None of them need the added complication of his family questioning him, questioning what he_ is _in these hard times, and whatever connection he has to Erebor is now painfully irrelevant in their exile anyway._

_If anyone notices his continued exhaustion – for even though he’d told himself only to use his powers in an emergency, most days seem as such and whenever they are near a settlement where he might find people willing to pay for beautiful rocks he does his duty – there’re more than enough possible reasons for his weariness and one more tired face among many doesn’t attract undue attention._

_Then the Battle of Azanulbizar happens, taking the lives of most of his family with it, and on that day something in him breaks into irrevocable pieces – when he’d been floundering, ever closer to a precipice of no return after the fall of Erebor, Moria has sent him over the edge. He doesn’t care any longer for how special he might have been in a different life, only seeing a long list of failures unfurl in front of his eyes instead of the glory of a mountain long behind._

_It takes years for Thorin to smile again – at two bundles of joy and mischief who still remember how to love unconditionally and without reservation._

_Playing with his sister-sons after their father’s death in an on-going desperate attempt by Dís and him to distract and protect them from grief so early in their still innocent little lives, Thorin slips for the first time. He hadn’t needed to be careful around small rocks for a long while with his powers thus diminished, but watching Kíli attack Fíli’s ‘soldiers’ with his ‘bowmen’, fashioned from rock and wood respectively, he quite unexpectedly finds his heart overflowing and the soldier he’d been holding begins to glimmer and sparkle. Fíli and Kíli are, of course, entirely delighted, but true to their dwarfling nature forget about it as soon as he baits them with the promise of a few smuggled sweets before bedtime._

_He wonders for a while after whether he should tell them – they’re his heirs after all – but he’s a king without a kingdom and the urge for secrecy has come to be instinctive and natural after so many years, so he stays his tongue and tells them stories of Erebor before its fall instead. Because however much he tries, he never manages to banish his old home from his mind, nor from his heart and an emptiness always gnaws within him._

*

However much he searched his mind, Thorin couldn’t find the right words for what was going through his head and heart when his eyes once more found the painfully familiar outline of Erebor, closer than ever now that they’d left Lake-Town behind, despite Fíli’s questioning gaze at his silent lack of motion.

The emptiness inside him had eased a little, since the first sighting of the Lonely Mountain up on the Carrock, but at the same time the desire, no the _need_ to reach his home had grown increasingly stronger. He hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, especially not to his nephews whose constant worrying about him was equally heart-warming as it was ridiculous and regrettable.

Perhaps he was only imagining it, but it seemed to him that ever since the revelation following his fight with Azog the atmosphere in the group had changed, now sometimes buzzing with a mixture of awe and uneasiness. No one’s behaviour had really changed, but sometimes there were glances and murmurs from those not closely acquainted with him before this trip, which he could do nothing but ignore.

It set his teeth on edge. He was still _Thorin_ , he hadn’t changed – just their perception of him – and this was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to tell anyone in the first place.

A gentle nudge to his shoulder brought him out of his brooding and he looked down to see Fíli smiling at him in what was probably an effort to cheer him up. For a moment time seemed to stand still as sunlight glinted of his sister-son’s golden hair, only rivalled in its brightness by Fíli’s grin when Thorin couldn’t help but smile back at him. There weren’t many moments of such unabashed privacy and appreciation, in which no matter how many people were around, one still felt alone in a bubble of safety, on a journey such as theirs, but every time Thorin paused to think of what he was defending and who he was trying to reclaim his home for, his chest expanded in a way that had nothing to do with the mountain itself and everything with the people around him, much more precious than anything his hands might conjure.

 “I’m fine,” he said now, for once actually meaning it, and nudged Fíli’s shoulder back. Even now, in this happy moment, he was painfully aware that he hadn’t really talked about what he’d so long concealed from them, even after the Carrock. Looking at Fíli now, one of the few dwarves whose attitude hadn’t noticeably changed, he thought that maybe he didn’t need to. “And tell your block-head of a brother that he can stop trying to make a fool of himself to make me laugh.”

Fíli’s grin immediately turned mischievous, hiding the relief flitting over his face at Thorin’s reassurance. “It’s not as if he has to try very hard, Uncle.”

“Hey, I heard that!” Kíli shouted from behind them, but he sounded mostly amused, so Thorin figured they were safe from a retributive brawl for the moment.

Thorin shook his head fondly, glad of the reminder that his nephews had not yet been so changed in nature by their journey.

Fíli took off not much later, presumably to bother Ori – one of his favoured pastimes lately – and Thorin found himself next to Bilbo, which was something of a relief as he, along with Balin and Dwalin, was the only other person whose attitude hadn’t noticeably changed around him. Thorin suspected that that might be because the hobbit hadn’t fully understood the implications of what he’d revealed – he was no dwarf, after all, and did not see stone as something sacred, something to be treasured – but the result was pleasing nonetheless.

“You’re good with them,” Bilbo said quietly, eyes fixed on Fíli and Kíli’s smiling forms.

Thorin shrugged, though pleased. “Every time I look at them they remind of why I am undertaking this quest.” He felt his face soften, despite himself. “I’ve watched the both of them grow into fine dwarves.”

Bilbo smiled at him warmly. “I’m sure you had something to do with that.”

Thorin inclined his head in acceptance of the well-meant compliment, but kept silent. He rather doubted that he had much to do with the way Fíli and Kíli had turned out – that was Dís’ doing and he wouldn’t claim otherwise.

 “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about the arkenstone,” Bilbo suddenly said, as far as Thorin was concerned completely out of the blue. He couldn’t help stiffening, automatic tension crackling up his spine, and kept his response noncommittal. “Hmm.”

Bilbo turned serious blue eyes to him and Thorin found himself unable to look away.

“I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to… lose yourself in such a way. And I _have_ noticed that you’ve been even quieter and more worried the closer we get to the mountain.”

“Which might also have something to do with the fire-breathing monster inside,” Thorin pointed out dryly.

But Bilbo continued, undeterred, his chin stubbornly set. “ – and I just wanted to say that I’ll be by your side the whole time.” He blushed. “That is, if you wish me to be.”

For a moment Thorin could only stare at him in astonishment, warmth rising in his chest as he took in the small, unassuming hobbit beside him who’d somehow managed to see right into his heart.

“That might be well,” he said quietly, remembering the feeling of loneliness that had accompanied the rush of power when he’d first touched the arkenstone with a barely concealed shudder, and got a relieved smile in return.

And Bilbo kept his word.

He was at Thorin’s side when he finally pressed his hand against the cool stone of Erebor and was nearly dizzied by the feeling of _recognition_ running through him. He joined in the search for the arkenstone as soon as Smaug was gone, never complaining about the long trudges through mountains of gold and jewels and everything precious he could ever have imagined. He was a soothing presence at Thorin’s back when they finally found it hours later – it seemed like chance, but Thorin, who’d felt an almost irresistible pull in the right direction, knew better – and he could only stare and silently blink at what had occupied his thoughts for so long. He didn’t need to ask how Thorin felt, for he saw it all in his eyes; the joy of return, the sorrow of memories, and the fear of what might still be to come. He agreed to keep the arkenstone safe when Thorin cornered him, his face almost desperate, and said nothing of the fact that Thorin had wrapped the jewel in a cloth as to better avoid touching it, despite the barely restrained twitching of his fingers and tightening around his mouth as he held out the stone. He stood next to the dwarf king as Bard of Lake-Town and Thranduil of Mirkwood marched onto Erebor, their demands echoing in the valley before the great gates, and weathered through Thorin’s protective fury, though not directed at him, even as the stone grew heavier in his coat pocket and the sky darkened above the mountain.

And perhaps most importantly, he kept his promise to stand by Thorin on the battle-field as the rightful king’s hand closed around the arkenstone when it became clear that without its powers to help the battle would be lost, to keep him grounded and watch over him while his consciousness poured out over the lands, and tried to forget the pleading whisper ‘ _do not let it go too far, call me back if I will not let go’_.

*

The memory of Thorin II Oakenshield, King under the Mountain, standing in the midst of a raging battle-field, surrounded by his company of trusted few as he held the arkenstone and his eyes blazed with white-blue fire and the ground trembled around them would long remain in the minds of men and elves and dwarves – songs would be composed, poems and histories written of the dwarf with the soul of a mountain his heart and the power of stone in his hands, after whose return the mountain would never again fall to its foes.

Some of these histories even remembered said dwarf’s kiss with a child of the kindly west, standing amidst bodies and destruction as they offered a new beginning to what would be their shared kingdom.


End file.
